D.C. men sentenced to prison for attacks, robberies on Silver Spring metro and metro bus

SILVER SPRING, Md. - Two men, half brothers, were sentenced in Montgomery County Circuit Court on Tuesday for two transit robberies back in April.

Marcus Lee was sentenced to six years in prison and Antwan Haynie to seven years in prison, with probation to follow.

Martrail Cunningham was sentenced to eight years in prison last week.

According to court documents, on April 16, 2017, around 5:30 p.m., a man reported to Metro Transit Police that he was robbed by four men as the train was approaching the Wheaton Metro station.

Video inside the metro car shows the group surrounding the man and one sitting next to him in the aisle seat, blocking him in.

Documents say one of the men demanded the victim's phone, then they proceeded to punch him and go through his pockets.

The victim told police that they were unable to get his cell phone but got away with his credit cards and I.D.

Approximately 90 minutes later, a man reported to Metro Transit Police that he was robbed of his cell phone while on a metro bus in the area of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue.

Documents say he told police that four men surrounded him on the bus. One put him in a choke hold while the others went through his pockets and stole his cell phone.

Through reviewing video surveillance footage, police were able to match the suspects from both robberies.

After they released the video to various media outlets, people came forward to identify the suspects.

Documents say that police met with the mother of Lee and Haynie, who are half brothers, and she identified them in the video.

Cunningham's mother did the same thing for police.

"This was really a sense of terror that they brought to that train car, because people really didn’t know what was going to happen next," says Ramon Korionoff, Public Affairs Director for the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. "It's just the kind of assault that is every transit user or commuter’s worst nightmare."

Korionoff says the victim from the first assault expressed that he could not ride the subway system alone.

The victim in the second assault, who had to receive stitches from his head injury, said that he lost his job because he was too scared to take the bus to get to work.

"You just can’t come out to Montgomery County and rob and steal and mug people on the subway and on the bus," he says. "We need our citizens and residents to feel safe on transit and that’s an important message coming out of the courts today."

Korionoff says the fourth person involved in the robberies is a juvenile and for that reason they cannot discuss him or any result that might have happened.

He says before the crime, both Haynie and Lee were already on probation in D.C. for another incident.